El Cafe Cartel, mental health, and why I am bullish on decency.
Introduction.
If you follow me on Twitter (looking at you, one of the lucky 219), you may have seen me writing, retweeting, or just generally going on about a new project on the NEAR protocol NFT scene, El Café Cartel.
Grinding.
I want to talk about some recent developments in the Cartel discord which have given me pause for thought.
For those who are familiar with NFTs, you will be au fait with a term known as “grinding”. Sounds a lot dirtier than it is, frankly.
When a new project appears which looks as impressive as El Café Cartel, the hype starts to build. People flood onto the discord, and they start chatting away. Some folks are just happy to be there and getting to know randomers on the internet. But others are chatting with an ulterior motive. They want to be active as much and as frequently as possible, in order to gain levels. The higher the level, the more active you have been.
Why would you play this game, good ser? Why would you spend countless hours, day or night, seeking to ‘level up’ and chat nonsense to relative strangers? Because the higher the level, the more you put yourself about, the greater the chance of being noticed and granted the coveted whitelist spot.
Granted, grinding is a bit like networking, only this has the feel of something particularly disingenuous, facile, and generally quite unauthentic. Not the qualities you would want in any online community, not least one seeking to be a brand leader in Web 3.
But what is the potent motivation? Obtaining a whitelist spot means you are certain to mint a project at entry price. For hyped projects, it’s as good as guaranteed profit as you can get.
So what happens when a bunch of people try to grind their way to instant profit?
Community turns into mindless chatter, memes, chats that move at a million miles per hour, and all meaning disintegrates into the ether, and not the good kind. And the other consequence?
People burn out.
I am a doctor. I speak to people every day who are struggling with their physical and mental well-being. And let me tell you: grinding is bad for your health.
It is bad for your physical health to spend all your walking hours in front of a screen or a phone at the cost of all else.
It is bad for your mental health to put all your hope into something that is as fickle and uncertain as this NFT world is. You will be burned, disappointed, and may have nothing to show for it. It’s a recipe for disaster, depression, and the death of a community.
So what is the solution and what does it have to do with El Café Cartel?
Well, this is a project that has been so hyped. For the NEAR ecosystem, it is unprecedented. When unjoined I was immediately excited, as was everyone else. The devs, the artist, the backing. It is going to be wildly successful.
But soon that familiar pattern emerged, and I could see that people were going too far and going to get wrecked as they spent every hour of every day grinding for the coveted whitelist spots.
So I decided to try something, and the results were surprising, to say the least.
Will not DM.
It would perhaps be hypocritical of me to think all this and do nothing, so I privately reached out to one of the Cartel bosses and we discussed the issue over DM. Together, we agreed that this was unhealthy. He said he would discuss it with the rest of the team.
The response has been exceptional.
The highlights for me?
“.. the Cartel value mental health and the need to switch off and take breaks from discord.. we will not be handing out any WL spots for grinding… We understand people have work, families and hobbies so we don’t want you to burn yourself out being here 24/7 chasing a WL.”
A couple of reflections here:
1) This does not benefit the project. The more grinding, the more hype, the more FOMO (fear of missing out). These trends tend to drive prices up and increase interest in the project. Deliberately discouraging this behaviour was refreshing, and I think that it will do the project and the community immense good as it launches.
2) I have never in my life heard the developers of an NFT project tell the community to essentially spend less time in the discord and more with their families. Or pursuing their hobbies. Or doing something else which is life-giving.
3) The community spoke, and the team listened. This is just massively encouraging for the future success of this project. The best leaders listen first and speak second. They have listened and responded to the community on several things now, every time doing so with humility.
And that is why I am bullish on El Cafe Cartel.
So how do I conclude this? The whole episode is, in my view, an indication that the project is confident enough in themselves and their brand to do the right thing by their members. They don’t owe us anything. But they have chosen to be decent and act in the best interests of their community. To say I am bullish on them is an understatement. Teams like this are rare in this space, and I am grateful for that.
For information, the Cartel can be accessed via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/ElCafeCartel?t=dF8zF0lKaSdYmeNAlP6sVg&s=09
or you can join their discord here:
I have written a summary of the project here:
https://twitter.com/cherundolobaker/status/1519679021856043008?t=3LGL3KDEbR31re9seCODmw&s=19
As always, not financial advice, do your own research, blah blah blah. Full DOI, I am whitelisted for Gen 1 of the project, but not Gen 0, and I will be minting.
Until next time.
$CAFE or lead amigos!
